Narmada: Arjun forced Cabinet hand

Cabinet panel was vertically divided on dam height

The Narmada Bachao Andolan's spirited campaign against raising the height of the Narmada Sagar-Sardar Sarovar Dam had caused a vertical division in the Political Affairs Committee of the Cabinet earlier this week, much to the dismay of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The charge against raising the height of the dam was led by HRD Minister Arjun Singh, who managed to convince the Cabinet panel.

The argument offered by several ministers (Law Minister HR Bharadwaj and Finance Minister P Chidambaram could not attend as they were not in town) was that Rs 22,000 crore had been spent on the dam, the foundation stone for which was laid by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1961. The project would provide much-needed power to three states, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra.

As an energy deficient country, India could not afford to overlook this gain, they argued, adding that the dam would be able to generate full power only if its height was raised to 121 feet.

"Yes, people must be rehabilitated, but 38,000 people cannot hold up a dam that will affect the lives of 4,00,000 people" one set of ministers said.

However, Arjun Singh led the charge on behalf of the poor and the dispossessed. He reminded the Assembly that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) had come to power on the promise of working for the `aam aadmi'.

"No one is speaking for the tribals. If we don't speak of them, who will?," Singh said, in a rare display of passion.

The decision was finally left to the prime minister, who said the government had itself sent a review committee comprising Union ministers to the site of the dam and would have to go by its report.

Meanwhile, in an unpublicised visit to Delhi two days ago, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi met Water Resources Minister Saifuddin Soz, who urged him to suspend construction work at the dam site, at least for the time being. The meeting was kept a secret as a kind of preliminary negotiation before the review committee gave its report. The idea was to get Modi to voluntarily stop work and defuse the crisis.

Modi is reported to have told Soz, "All we can see is 121metre (the final height of the dam)." To Soz's suggestion that India would hail him as a great statesman, Modi said, "For me, only the garlands from the people of Gujarat are important".

Modi plans to lead a delegation of BJP MPs to Soz tomorrow to tell him to ensure that the Supreme Court's order confirming the height of the dam was implemented. It is also a political move to publicly claim credit for the gains the Narmada dam will bring to Gujarat.

The review committee that is to meet tomorrow is likely to say in its report that rehabilitation has not been comprehensive.

The problem is that most of the gains of the dam will accrue to Gujarat, while those affected are mostly in Madhya Pradesh. Gujarat paid Madhya Pradesh for rehabilitation but the money went into the Consolidated Fund of the Government of Madhya Pradesh.